A panel discussion on open banking at the Australian Payments Summit in Sydney yesterday analysed the pros and cons of mandating the changes needed to even the playing field.Gijs Boudewijn, chair of the European Banking Federation's payment systems committee, was adamant that a prescriptive approach was called for in Europe, as PSD2 has not been written with open banking in mind. He suggested this left uncertainty over what constituted compliance with the law, particularly as accounts at major banks were going to be opened up to fintechs and others for free. He suggested there would otherwise be gaps between what the banks have to do and what the banks are prepared to do.Steve Wiggins, chief executive of Payments NZ, took a very different view, asserting that if the New Zealand payments sector had been given a strong prescriptive mandate "it would have ended badly". Instead, the New Zealand payments sector is readying itself for the first trials of open banking by the end of this year."We are firm believers in market-led innovation because we think it does deliver the right outcome for consumers "get them all in the room at the same time to actually work through that innovation is well," Wiggins said."Whether it is around financial inclusion, innovation or competition these are key drivers, you've got a look at the fundamentals of the region, at the core banking situation and how the social structure is, as well.""[Open Banking] is more than just one of the cool apps made by hipsters."By way of contrast, Scott Farrell, partner at major law firm King & Wood Mallesons and author of the blueprint for Australia's open banking, said that having the government's intentions for open banking set out in a federal budget made his job easier. "What having a mandate does is it breaks the 'prisoner's dilemma' in [that] no bank wants to be the first to go ahead with any economy-wide changes."What a mandate does is to allow people all through organisations to say 'this is not a business case issue; this is a compliance with the law situation, so we're stuck with that'. "That leaves it up to the bank's staff to sort out how to themselves 'how can we get the most from this position?'" Boudewijn  added that there is an additional dilemma, in that for social inclusion to work people would need to give up using cash, as budgeting services based on open banking systems will not take non-digitised payments (that is, cash) into account.Steve Wiggins dryly observed that research has shown that in New Zealand 25 people of people prefer to pay tradespeople in cash.Scott Farrell reminded the audience that - in Australia at least - open banking] is a data portability mechanism. "It's not a good idea to load too many policy outcomes in relation to a really neat way of sending information from one place to another," Farrell said."It's not about moving data away from banks to fintechs. It's about moving information to an accredited recipient